He stabs his fingers through his golden hair. “What about him?”
“You liked him.”
“Well, you liked Dante.” Phoebus turns back toward me. “And look how that turned out.”
I sandwich my lips. “Except Mercutio didn’t discard you into the enemy realm.”
“Crows aren’t the enemy, sweetie.” Sybille wraps one hand around mine and squeezes my fingers gently.
I steal my hand from hers and return it to my lap. How can she say this when they’re keeping me locked up here?
“I’m glad you finally saw Dante’s true colors,” Giana says while Antoni watches my face for a reaction.
Since I neither want to think about Dante nor dissect our obsolete relationship, I change the subject. “So, what else have the lot of you been doing besides converting to Crowism?”
Riccio snorts. “Crowism.”
“Resting, exploring, meeting new people.” Gia steals a crumb of cheese off a wooden platter littered with fruit rinds and blackened vegetable stems. “Communicating is challenging as most Crows don’t speak Lucin, but the few who do help us translate.”
A girl with braided, inky hair and inkier eyes glides through the tavern as though she were more serpent than bird. She stops beside our table and smiles. It’s not that I was expecting her to growl or caw . . .
All right, I was.
“Gia,álo.”
Giana snaps her gray eyes onto the newcomer. I don’t miss the fierce glitter that turns them silver. “Hello, Aoife.”
“You room for one more?”
“Of course.” Giana shuffles to make room for Eefah.
“You must be Fallon. Such a pleasure to make meeting.”
“To meet you,” Phoebus corrects her.
“Ah,tà.To meet you.” The words unspool with accents on all the wrong syllables. Where Lucin sounds like harp music, Crow sounds like rocks jouncing down a riverbed—raw, wet, and guttural.
The woman’s smile exposes teeth that are slightly crooked yet don’t take away from her overall attractiveness—a beauty that both Giana and Riccio have clearly noticed.
“Aoife is Imogen’s sister,” Phoebus explains.
Beneath her black mask of makeup rests the same small feather that adorns every Crow’s cheekbone. “You met Immy?”
The memory of Lorcan’scolleagueabrades my already tetchy mood.
“We ran into her and Ríhbiadh on our way over.” Everyone at our table—and not at our table—grows quiet when Phoebus drops Lorcan’s last name.
“Well, I’m nice one.” Eefah leans over the table, her long braid swishing past shoulders that are wider than Giana’s, but not quite as wide as Riccio’s. Probably from all the flying.
I try to remember if Imogen’s were as wide, but the hallway in which we met was dark and I was rather busy glowering at my jailer.
“You and me have so much in common, Aoife.” Sybille grins tauntingly at her older sister, who rolls her eyes.
“I personally prefer Gian—” Before Phoebus can pop the lastaout, Sybille pinches an orange rind off an otherwise bare platter and launches it at our friend’s pretty face. It hits his tall forehead and slithers down his nose before plopping onto the table. “Just proving my point, Syb.” He knuckles the slimy juice off his skin. “Oh, and you’ll pay for that later.”
She smiles as though daring him to get her back. Which he will. Phoebus always strikes back, but unlike Syb, who’s of theact-first-ask-questions-latertribe, Pheebs is imbued with an inordinate amount of patience.
“So, Imogen works with your king?” I ask.
